Sunday, January 11, 2015

Chief Rabbi of Israel Speaks of France's Dead

He has called upon the community of France to bury the dead of Friday's terror attack in Paris in Israel because they died "al Kiddush Hashem" - which roughly translates, for the holiness of God or the sanctification of His Name...or, to put it in the simplest of terms - they died simply because they were Jews.

They have the classification of "harugay malchut" - the idea is that their status is free from sin, where they stand, no one else can stand. They are with those murdered through the centuries - in the Holocaust, the pogroms, and so many other times and places.

Bring them home...and come with them. Bury them here, and then come here to live.

Come here - from France, from Australia, from Germany and Hungary. Come from the Ukraine, Miami, Detroit and Chicago. Come because there is only one place where we can stand, only one place where we can breathe.

Come because there is no other place you can be home, no other place you can be what you are.

A few years ago, I learned something that I had never known - it was a startling fact, made more shocking because of the first thought that came to my mind.

When the Jews were taken out of Egypt - when they followed Moses (Moshe Rabenu, our teacher), I thought they call left, all came home. Four out of five, stayed behind in Egypt...and there they died.

Only 20% left, only 20% were given the honor of coming home...that's the thing I learned. And the first thought that I had was that we are approaching that point now - 20% will come home; 80% will disappear, be erased from the history of the Jewish people...we will go on into the future, so many will be left behind.

Most of the family I have left in the United States has intermarried...gone from our people or fast leaving. They won't come home, they won't leave.

I feel this movement today, stronger than ever before. I think...I hope...I want to believe...that the Jews of France will bring their precious dead to be buried in Israel, and they will come with them, after them. Come home...please...and please bury Yoav Hattab and the others here - they knew...they knew.

Update: Early this evening, it was announced by the families that they would indeed bury the four victims in Israel.